Mt Kinubalu

The Mountain from across the valley

 Mt Kinubalu stands as a lonely spire on the island of Borneo, no other mountain comes close to it's 4095.2m peak until you reach the Himalayas.  No, it is not a volcano, nor has it ever been it was formed through geological uplift and is believed to be growing approximately 5cm per year.  In order to climb it you are required to have a guide and special climbing permit and jump through a bunch of hoops.  Rather than try to do this myself and mess it up I opted to do the easy thing and pay extra for somebody else to straighten it out.  Even more than that I decided that the Mountain Torq via Ferratta sounded like the cool thing to do.  A Via Ferratta is when iron holds are cemented into the rock in order to make a route possible or easier to climb.  In this case it turned a steep slab into a virtual walkway.  Anyways that comes later.  The company picked me up from my accomodation in the morning and drove me, not only to the entrance of the park, but right to the official start of the trail after picking up my guide and sorting out all my papers.  The trailhead started at 1866m and our destination for the day was Laban Rata, a collection of huts and a restaurant at the 6km and 3200m mark.  My guide's name was Stephen, he lives in the village just outside the park entrance, he isn't married yet but I think he has a woman in mind and they will marry within one year.  He told me that he usually takes people up the mountain two times in a week and the rest of the time he grows his own vegetables for food, though not to sell.  He is the youngest in his family and has 8 older brothers and one sister, a very large family.  While conversation was difficult for him, and sometimes we didn't understand each other's questions at first it was nice at least to have somebody to hike with, and he knew all the names of the plants in his native Dusun and the Latin although not always the English names.  More often I found conversation difficult due to the steepness of the climb, steeper than the path up to Rawson Lake, and even longer to boot.  The weather was mostly cooperative for me.  I got a nice picture of the mountain from across the valley while driving up, when I passed the same place two weeks later there was nothing but clouds everywhere.

The stream, err path during rain

Most of my first day's climb was clear, but rain started when I was about 1.5km from the top.  Since I just had an overnight bag my pack cover that is designed for my big bag didn't exactly fit the best.  When the rain really got going the trail up started to look more like a riverbed than a hiking trail.  I also found a giant worm on the trail and had to make sure I could show the scale, it was half a meter long!  We reached Laban Rata around 3pm and Stephen dropped me at the Mountain Torq hut and we parted ways untill 3am the next morning to catch the sunrise from the peak.  There were 6 other people doing the same route as me the next day, a Dutch couple, an American couple and an Australian couple.  We had a safety briefing on how the safety equipment works.  We were roped together, and we had what they called a scorpion.  The scorpion was a double carrabiner with locking backs, the rope was threaded through "pig-tails" an open looped anchors that were every 2-5m and the scorpion was clipped to the steel cable that ran the length of the route.  Satisfied we knew how to work the safety system we were sent down to the main hut for dinner at the restaurant there.  I forgot my meal ticket so I thought I would quickly run back up to our hut.  It was not much more than a flight of stairs but I was winded before I got halfway up, reminding me first hand why high altitude starts at 3000m in physiology.  While we were getting our safety briefing the weather had started to clear so by the end of dinner a beautiful sunset was shaping up.

View of the sunset, all the pics were out this window

Legendary

It is possible that this was the most beautiful sunset I have ever seen in in my life.  The setting was dramatic the colours explosive and the result legen - wait for it - dary.

Tired at the top

 

The hike up to the top wasn't too difficult, despite leaving 30mins behind the majority of people and feeling like I really took my time I was up at the peak for 5am, and before the bulk of people, just before the sun started to peek up from behind the ocean then the clouds and then finally the peaks.  After a short descent we met up with our Via Ferrata trainers and said so long to our guides.  

I defied mother nature to make this sunrise better than the sunset.

About to start the Via Ferratta with Joep and Marjan

Being the Dutch magnet that I am I was paired up with the couple from the Netherlands, Joep and Marjan.  It was a beautiful scene, to me very easy climbing, and I think the pictures can speak for themselves.  

When we got back to Laban Rata it was 11am, we had all been hiking for over eight hours on a breakfast of toast and snacks of chocolate.  I love how hiking makes it so I don't feel guilty about eating loads of chocolate, the original energy bar.  We had a second breakfast and then headed down the mountain.  It took only a bit over two hours to go down when it had taken six to come up, this was still taking time and making sure I didn't slip and kill myself since my legs were numb before I even left Laban Rata.

My guide Stephen presenting me with my completion certificates.